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  • From: tanya <tanyagarden@gmail.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Rock Dust
  • Date: Thu, 7 Mar 2013 22:23:45 -0800

It's mostly a rant against the Rodale doctrine of compost and more
compost, and of compost as the answer to all soil woes. iirc he
recommends using a very small amount of compost after the first year
(as does Nauta, in fact) -- something like 1/4 inch to 1/8 inch or
less. Nauta talks about Elaine Ingham's rec, which comes to 1/90 inch.

Combined with that is a rant against Rodale for avoiding any mention
of Albrecht's ideas of balancing Ca and Mg so that they occupy 80% of
cation exchange sites

On Thu, Mar 7, 2013 at 10:08 PM, Chris Carnevale
<c.s.carnevale@gmail.com> wrote:
> Does Solomon have something against compost or does he just warn against
> using only compost and nothing else?
>
> Chris
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 8, 2013 at 12:38 AM, tanya <tanyagarden@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Mar 7, 2013 at 8:32 PM, Chris Carnevale <c.s.carnevale@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > Hi,
>> >
>> > I'm wondering who has used rock dust as a soil amendment and what your
>> > results were? Has anyone found a better freely available micronutrient
>> > source? How does seaweed compare to rock dust?
>> >
>>
>> Haven't used it, but I recently read Steve Solomon's book on growing
>> nutrient-dense food, The Intelligent Gardener. He says mineralized
>> basalt rock dust is not practical for backyard gardeners because it's
>> expensive (to use the amount needed) and takes many years to show a
>> difference. He analyzes what specific minerals you get (pounds of
>> each element per ton of rock dust) and looks at what other sources are
>> available. Instead of rock dust, he recommends sulfates from Black
>> Lake Organics for Fe, Mn, Cu, and Zn. They can be added to a dry fert
>> (based on the results of a specific $20 soil test from Logan Labs) or
>> used as a foliar feed (using a max of 1 tablespoon of single or mixed
>> sulfates per gallon of water; i teaspoon max for Cu). For
>> micronutrients such as Cr Co I Mb Se Sb V Ni he recommends kelp meal
>> at 1 pound per 100 sf per year. For B he recommends regular laundry
>> borax, a teaspoon or so per 100 sf, depending on your soil test. (I
>> don't own the book but took a few notes.)
>>
>> I'm in the middle of reading Phil Nauta's book on growing
>> nutrient-dense food, Building Soils Naturally. He does recommend rock
>> dust for everyone, but does not go into the details of what it
>> contains or how long it takes to see results. He recommends 2-50
>> pounds per cubic yard of compost so that it gets chelated with the
>> organic matter. For application directly to garden beds, he cites
>> other recommendations, which vary from 15 to 50 pounds per 100 sf, and
>> says as little as 0.5 lb/100sf has shown results. He also recommends
>> kelp meal, at 0.3-1 pound per 100 sf/yr. In addition, he also
>> recommends ocean water for some of the same trace minerals (and
>> recommends other additives that act as biostimulants), but again, does
>> not name the minerals.
>>
>> Engineers will prefer the Solomon approach, very linear and
>> numbers-based, with detailed arguments for making each choice.
>>
>> Kitchen witches will prefer the Nauta approach, lots of brews and
>> biostimulants.
>>
>> The approaches seem quite different, but depending on your garden and
>> your goals, I think both approaches lend themselves to experimentation
>> and are complementary, for the most part. They do disagree on using
>> ferts with GMOs, and Solomon has a whole chapter about not relying on
>> compost.
>>
>> If anyone else has read either or both of these books, I'd be
>> interested in hearing what you think. I've been thinking of getting my
>> soil tested (at a community garden plot) and playing around with more
>> than just the alfalfa pellets, nettle and comfrey teas, and compost
>> I've been using.
>>




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